


Something New on the Scales

by Black_Betty



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Atonement - Freeform, M/M, charles is a voice actor, erik is a recording engineer, just go with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 11:37:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Betty/pseuds/Black_Betty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik runs a recording studio and Charles is a voice actor. It's love at first spoken word...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something New on the Scales

**Author's Note:**

> For Ikeracity who is ensuring I am writing more random fic than ever before by throwing amazing ideas at my head and providing visual aids...
> 
> Like this one:
> 
> http://ikeracity.tumblr.com/post/60045112076
> 
> and this one:
> 
> http://ikeracity.tumblr.com/post/60135170724/radioplanet-tv-interview
> 
>  
> 
> Title and italicized excerpts taken from Atonement

 

It was still dark when Erik parked his motorcycle, the empty street wet from the rain, florescent streetlights illuminating oil slick puddles. Some people might think getting to work at 4:30 am was ridiculous, or painful, but there was some soothing about unlocking the door, stepping off a quiet street into the shadowed silence of the studio.

He tossed his keys down on Angel’s desk in the cramped reception, clicked on the soft halogens that illuminated the long hallway down to his office. He had half an hour before Charles came in for his session, just enough time to make himself a coffee, to boil water for Charles’ tea. There was something warm and comforting in the hush of the empty building, something calming in the domesticity of this new morning schedule, and as he fell back on the enormous couch that took up an entire wall of the break room, threw his feet up on the coffee table, he shut his eyes and tried not to think about how quickly he’d gotten used to their routine.

He had been working with Charles for a month now. Couldn’t believe it had only been a month when it felt like he had known Charles for years. He couldn't imagine his life without him now, and it was strange to think that he had been so resistant to taking on this project in the beginning.

Erik had owned Metallic Studios for five years, almost straight out of college. He had always been someone who looked for the unknown act, the gritty girls with shaved heads who sang in five-part harmony and wailed on the electric guitar, or the 87 year old blues guitarist who played on the street corner by Erik’s dilapidated apartment. He always had one eye out and both ears to the ground, was always looking for something new, something different.

So he had been resistant when Emma had asked him to take on one of her clients, a voice actor who had been hired by some big publishing conglamorate to record an audio book. He explained to her that he dealt in music, not literature, but Emma had been as persistent as she always was, reminded him how she had cosigned his loan when he wanted to open the studio, had taken a chance on him though he was green and naïve. Reluctantly he had agreed in the end, swayed by the promise of a fairly substantial paycheck and Emma’s guilt trip down memory lane.

The day he met the audiobook client, he had been expecting an elderly man maybe, a Christopher Lee type with a low rumbling voice full of gravitas. But when Charles had arrived, he surprised Erik by being young, for one thing. Beautiful, for another. Erik was reminded immediately of that old saying about ‘having a face for radio.’ He couldn't understand why Charles was recording his voice when his face could have been spread across magazine pages, or projected onto fifty foot screens, flushed cheeks and pale skin, lips and eyes that could have been captured on frescos, in thick oil paint or watercolour.

But when Charles had smiled and shook his hand, opened his mouth to introduce himself and say what a pleasure it was to be working with Erik, he was a fan of his work and had heard much about him from Emma, Erik thought maybe he could understand the voice acting thing. His accent was a crisp British upperclass, but warm and round as hot butterscotch, vowels that seemed to melt in his mouth like chocolate. He had a way of inflecting even the most mundane words so that you couldn’t help but be drawn into what he was saying, like hypnosis.

The first time Charles had stepped into the booth, his voice lit up Erik’s board like a dream. Erik had closed his eyes, had been so enraptured with the rich words coming out of his speakers, listening with his breath caught in his throat as they wound around him like a soft animal, like blankets in a familiar bed after a long time spent away from home, he had forgot to say ‘cut,’ had forgot he was even recording until Charles had said, hesitantly,

“How was that?”

He had blustered, had rambled something about adjusting the levels and then turned off his microphone so Charles couldn’t hear how strangled and broken his own voice was.

It didn’t help that Charles was recording an audio version of _Atonement_ , a book Erik had actually read and loved though it ripped his heart out, had made him cry in the privacy of his own room, embarrassed, under the cover of darkness. The language was so rich, so lush and Charles voice was perfectly suited for it. He added to the lines a depth of feeling that cut Erik to his core, moved him in a way that he hadn’t experienced outside of music and the way certain melodies seemed to yearn and strain straight from the soul.

He hadn’t realized he’d dozed off until the sound of the buzzer jostled him from sleep. The kettle was steaming and he glanced at his watch. Five AM. Perfect timing, as usual.

Charles was waiting at the front door when he got there, the collar of his coat turned up against rain that had started up again. He beamed at Erik through the glass, face slightly lined with early morning weariness, but no less attractive for the dark circles and pillow creases.

He shook his hair out when Erik unlocked the door to let him in, droplets of rain flying everywhere, leaving his hair curling softly, auburn in the warm lamplight. Erik took his coat and hung it up, something he usually left the guests to do by themselves and tried to ignore the way Charles shivered and pulled the long sleeves of his sweater over his hands, the way his white t-shirt clung damply to the sharp line of his collarbone.

They spoke quietly in the break room as Charles made his tea and Erik stirred sugar into the dark swirl of his coffee. There was something calming about Charles voice in the early morning quiet of the studio, something in the low rasp that made Erik think of spending mornings with Charles another way. He couldn’t stop his wishful brain from supplying images of Charles tucked close in the warmth of his bed, Charles voice drifting to him from over the pillows, Charles drinking his tea as the sun begins to filter through the window, their legs tangled beneath the sheets.

He was trying, desperately, to maintain some kind of professionalism, but it was hard when Charles sipped his tea, smiled at him from over the rim of the mug, and teased Erik lightly for his bed head.

Harder still once Charles stepped into the main booth, separated from Erik with a wall of soundproof glass. The lights on Charles side of the recording studio were dim and golden yellow, and as Erik watched him stretch and shake out his arms and legs, watched him work through his ridiculous vocal warm-ups and slide head phones around his neck, it felt almost sacred observing him from the dark side side of the booth. As though they were enclosed within their own universe, sealed off from the rest of the world.

They had been recording nearly every day for a month now, and Erik wasn’t sure he’d ever be used to the way Charles centered himself, breathed in and opened up, an entire world pouring out of him, not just in words and inflection and the rise and fall of his voice, but in his expressions, the way he moved his hands. He used his entire body to spell out the story, and Erik was embarrassingly, selfishly pleased that he would be the only person to ever witness this performance. The thought that no one else would ever see the heartbreak pass across Charles face, or the simple joy, or the way he smiled and it was only a mask concealing years of longing, and an ancient forbidden love, was something he jealously horded, imprinted behind his eyes and tucked away close to his heart for careful examination once Charles had left for the day.

Charles had his eyes closed now, his hands held up in front of him as though stretching out to caress someone standing right before him, only just out of reach. He paused for the long minute Erik would need to edit the track together and then wet his lips in the slow drag that always drove Erik crazy, took one long breath, began:

_They were beyond the present, outside time, with no memories and no future. There was nothing but obliterating sensation, thrilling and swelling, and the sound of fabric on fabric and skin on fabric as their limbs slid across each other in this restless, sensuous wrestling. ... They moved closer, deeper and then, for seconds on end, everything stopped._

He waited a beat, and Erik was aware, distantly, that he had stopped breathing, that his fingers were curled into the leather armrests of his chair, but his heart was a distant drumbeat, and his thoughts were very far away,

_Instead of an ecstatic frenzy, there was stillness. They were stilled not by the astonishing fact of arrival, but by an awed sense of return - they were face to face in the gloom, staring into what little they could see of each other's eyes, and now it was the impersonal that dropped away._

Charles’ breath stuttered in his chest, the words breaking off, and his eyes blinked open, pupils blown black in the low light, a flush on his cheeks. His fingers curled where they were still held up in front of him, hands folding inward as though twisting into invisible fabric, but he was looking away from the microphone, looking directly at Erik.

Erik was standing before he was even aware he was moving, his hand suddenly on the doorway to the booth, hauling it open as though disconnected from his limbs, and there was Charles’ still looking at him, still flushed, his eyes wide and almost panicked, like an animal caught in the headlights.

“Erik?” He said, and the sound of his voice cracked a splinter through whatever spell had been cast over Erik’s brain, sent Erik stumbling toward him. He swung the microphone out of the way, gathered Charles up in his arms and pressed him back against the dark grey foam padding of the booth wall designed to absorb sound, but not enough to swallow the gasp Charles let loose before Erik kissed him.

Charles moaned, clutching at Erik’s shirt, sliding his thigh between Erik’s legs and rolling against him again and again, desperately. He was shaking in Erik’s arms, nearly frantic, and Erik forced himself to pull back and breathe, rested his forehead on Charles’ broad shoulder. He stroked his hands down Charles’ arms, and whispered,

“All you alright?”

He could feel Charles nod against his throat, felt his fingers unwind themselves from the front of Erik’s shirt and loop around behind his back so that they were embracing each other. Charles let out a shaky breath,

“I think I’ve wanted to do that since the first time we met.”

Erik said nothing but nodded, ran his hands up the back of Charles’ shirt to finally feel his bare skin, to hear the hitch in his breathing. As they drew back from each other, he brushed Charles’ hair back off his face, examining all the parts of his beautiful face in intimate detail. Charles seemed to be watching him just as closely, and when they kissed again it was less frantic and more languorous, lingering, Charles tongue touching his tentatively and then licking inside his mouth with a twist and push that caused Erik to moan.

They kissed for an endless moment pressed up against the wall, Erik finally able to touch his fill, tracing his palm up the line of Charles’ spine under his shirt, running his fingers along the frustrating barrier of Charles’ trousers. He stoked as much skin as he could reach, rubbed his thigh against the rapidly hardening line of Charles cock, and when Charles began to pant against his mouth, his heart fluttering in his chest, Erik pulled back and fell to his knees.

Charles moaned and Erik had to rest his forehead against his hip as he unbuckled his belt, the sound of that voice uttering his name with an undertone of pure lust nearly undoing Erik right then and there. Finally working his belt free, tugging trousers and briefs down his legs and pressing a kiss to one creamy thigh before licking a long line up his cock, he set to work reducing that delicious voice to incoherency.

The sound of Charles moaning long and loud, his voice wrenched out of his chest as he came, as Erik swallowed around him, nearly tipped Erik over the edge into his own orgasm. He looked up at Charles, gorgeously flushed and barely standing, propped up only through the strength of Erik’s hands on his hips, and felt a well of happiness swell up in his chest and nearly choke him.

He must have been smiling because Charles grinned back at him and laughed, exhausted, and said,

“Pleased with ourselves, are we?” He pulled up his pants and underwear and slid down the wall, straddled Erik’s thighs, and threw his arms around his neck, drawing him in and kissing him messily, lewdly, making a pleased noise at the taste of himself in Erik’s mouth.

Erik was so hard he was aching with it, and he gripped Charles with one hand, kissed him hard as his other hand went for the zipper of his jeans, pulling out his cock and finally getting his fingers around it.

Charles whispered against his mouth,

“Let me,” and pushed Erik over onto his back, curled up between his legs and sucked on his cock until Erik came with a shout, his vision blurring out, his toes curling with the absolute pleasure of it.

When his vision cleared he could see Charles crawling up his body slowly, hips swaying, smiling at him before flopping down next to him on the studio floor. Charles’ copy of _Atonement_ with all its flags and dogears, the highlighted text and notes in the margins, was lying next to them, knocked off its stand at some point, and Charles picked it up, smoothing down the pages that had been crumpled in the fall, stroking the leather of the front cover.

Erik silently thanked his own foresight of putting a wide, soft rug down on the studio floor, rolled his shoulders and tucked himself back into his pants before turning on his side to face Charles who looked away from his book to smile easily at him.

“I don’t think I can work with you anymore,” Erik said, and Charles’s expression dropped, looked worried and hurt for a moment before Erik reached out to him, ran a hand though his tousled hair, “how can I sit in there and listen to you when it makes me want to fuck you?”

Charles brightened again, shifted closer to brush a kiss against Erik’s mouth.

“Well,” he murmured, “Maybe we could take tomorrow off?” He pulled back so he could look Erik in the face, “I was thinking it might be nice to sleep in for a change…but maybe not in my own bed?”

Erik grinned and rolled over, pinning Charles beneath him on the carpet. Charles laughed and Erik had to kiss him again, plucking the book from his fingers and tossing it gently to the corner of the studio.

“I think we deserve a day off…or two.”

(They get their day off, but in the end Charles still read to him, this time tucked beneath the covers of Erik’s bed, the lamp by his side casting long shadows on the wall, one of his hands running slow fingers through Erik’s hair. Erik felt safe even though the rainstorm from the night before rumbled to life again and lashed against his window pane. The warmth of his bed, the smooth skin of Charles’ hip under his palm, the pressure of Charles’ hand on his hair and the sound of his voice filling the corners of Erik’s room filled Erik with an odd, yearning sense of comfort that both buoyed him up and twisted strangely in his chest.

He couldn't put a name to it, but as Charles’ read aloud and Erik placed his mouth on his throat, kissed him there as though he could taste the words beneath his skin, could swallow them and know them inside and out, he thought he might finally understand.

_The anticipation and dread he felt at seeing her was also a kind of sensual pleasure, and surrounding it, like an embrace, was a general elation—it might hurt, it was horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but he had found out for himself what it was to be in love, and it thrilled him._ )

 


End file.
